Why Email Marketing Should Be an Advisor Priority

Although new marketing channels such as social media networks have changed the way financial advisors are communicating with clients, email marketing is still one of the best — and most effective — ways to reach clients.

As an advisor, you have only so much time in your day to meet face-to-face with existing clients, work on business development and prospect new clients. Email marketing makes it easy to keep in constant contact with your clients and maintain that ever-so-important one-on-one relationship. It also helps expand your reach beyond your existing client list and it’s a cost efficient solution.

Think of email marketing as an easy way to increase referrals and stay in touch with existing clients. If someone is looking for a financial advisor, where do they go first? They ask family and friends for referrals. If you regularly send out helpful emails to your clients, they can easily forward the information to their family and friends — that’s a way for potential clients to learn more about you. The same principal is true for keeping your work in front of existing clients. When clients receive your email and see good content you’ve included, they’re likely to reach out to review their portfolios, invest more money or buy new products.

It’s a Low-Cost Solution

Email marketing allows you to reach a large number of clients with minimal effort and cost. The time spent is the same whether you send out an email newsletter to one client or to 400. Clients don’t always have time to book an appointment or answer the phone, so stay connected with them via email. Send out links to your blog and downloadable reports or helpful budget templates and net worth trackers to keep clients engaged and thinking about their finances.

Email is Trackable

If you’re using an email subscription tool such as Mail Chimp or a tool such as Google Analytics to track your email campaigns, there’s a lot of useful information available to you. It helps you learn which content is most popular and which times during the day clients are most responsive. Analytics allows you to send content that clients want to read and click on, which helps increase your sales leads. (For related reading, see: Twitter Tools Advisors Should Consider.)

Here are a few of the metrics you should be paying attention to:

Click through rate(CTR): The percentage of recipients that clicked on one or more links in an email.

Conversion rate: The percentage of recipients that clicked on a link and completed a desired action.

Bounce rate: The percentage of total emails that could not be delivered.

List growth rate: The rate at which your list is growing.

Email Sharing/Forwarding rate: The percentage of recipients who clicked on share this or forward.

Your clients have different needs and require differing levels of service. Email analytics can help you group your customers and prospects into segments by various demographics such as life stage, size of portfolio and budget.

It's Not Intrusive

Email marketing is the least intrusive method of contact with your clients. Clients can go into their inbox and read the information at their leisure. That increases the chances of clients seeing your information. Also, an email lasts longer than a phone call — once you hang up the phone, the point of contact is over and you’re gone from their mind because clients have moved on to something else. An email lingers in their inbox/folder for a much longer time.

When your email arrives with an interesting subject line, it has the potential to reel clients in. It also proves effective for clients who are on-the-go. Email marketing allows you to reach clients wherever they may be and on multiple devices — laptop, tablet, cell phone, etc. (For related reading, see: Why Social Media Is a Necessity for Advisors.)

Trading Center

Partner Links

Want to learn how to invest?

Get a free 10 week email series that will teach you how to start investing.